


Too Many Flowers

by Mythril (fantacination)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amputation, Gen, Kuron, Multi, Some talk about past torture/violence, This fic couldn't decide if it was crack or angst, canon-typical lance/allura - Freeform, slight shiro/keith - Freeform, they're all just doing their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 23:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12242469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantacination/pseuds/Mythril
Summary: A look at how the team might react to finding Shiro Clones. A lot of Shiro Clones.The good news was that they’d gotten Shiro back. The bad news was that they’d gotten alotof Shiros back.





	Too Many Flowers

The good news was that they’d gotten Shiro back. The bad news was that they’d gotten a _lot_ of Shiros back.

 

Hunk looked around, eyes darting nervously over the grumpier-looking clones. A few were even more scarred than Shiro was. “Uhh, Keith? I don’t think they’re supposed to multiply like that.” He counted one, two, another two over there, and then that wasn’t counting the ones Keith had or _their_ Shiro who was visibly struggling to wrap his head around the idea of having so many doppelgangers.

 

“I couldn’t just leave them there,” Keith said, scowl defiant as he cradled three of them at once. He looked like one of Lance’s little cousins, trying desperately to hold onto all the toys.

 

“Keith,” their Shiro said gently.

 

Keith flinched guiltily, glancing up, then back down again. “I couldn’t.”

 

Shiro sighed. “We’ll talk later. Right now, everyone needs medical attention. Matt’s stable, but we need to get him and the rest of the wounded freedom fighters to a pod.”

 

Everyone stared for a moment longer- then Pidge ran forward. “Matt!”

 

As if a spell had been broken, the rest of the paladins rushed to action. Most of the Shiros were in pretty bad shape. One had never been fitted with a prosthesis, the stump of his carved arm hanging at his side. He looked dazed as Hunk carefully lifted him onto one of the hover-trolleys.

 

“Hey it’s okay,” Hunk tried to soothe. It hurt to see him flinch, this person that looked like their leader but wasn’t. He did his best to be gentle, to treat each clone’s heart-sinkingly light body like delicately spun sugar. Some of them didn’t even seem to notice.

 

Hunk had a passing familiarity with cloning- it wasn’t really anything they delved into too much at the Garrison, with its focus on physics and engineering, but he knew the old experiments, the famous ones. He knew the debates that had quietly choked and pruned the practice from legal science. He knew that for every success, there had to have been hundreds of failures. How many had they not been able to save? He wondered if that thought tore at Keith. He’d been alone when he’d retrieved them and there was a sunken hauntedness in his face as he handled each clone with careful hands and snapping eyes.

 

Hunk wanted to ask, and he didn’t. Some part of him was afraid that if he did, something in Keith might snap too.

 

Easier to think about if he was making scones or biscuits for tea. How many did one shiro eat, anyway? Did they all have the same tastes? The way they followed Keith around sure seemed like it.

 

Baking was soothing. And it was practical. There were a lot of people on the ship now and people needed food, worrying about having a dozen or so too many Shiros was much more manageable when he had his hands sunk into dough. It was a silly thing to worry about, anyway. Probably. At least, they didn’t seem like an immediate threat. Truth be told, most of the Shiros were really chill and cool dudes, much like the original.

 

But some of these guys just felt… off.

 

As if on cue, one of the... more frightening Shiros stalked into the kitchen, his blank yellow eyes narrowed into slits. His teeth ended in points. “H-Heeey,” Hunk trailed off awkwardly, unsure what to call him.

 

“Food.”

 

 _Please don’t eat me_ , Hunk thought. “S-sure thing.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

Shiro understood why Keith had done it. Of course he had.

 

If he’d run into a room full of Keiths trapped in glass cages--- he didn’t think he could turn away, either. Just the mental image made him sick to his stomach.

 

But it was… hard, looking at them and mapping the history in their scars- or lack of them.

 

Only two of the clones were fully organic, the rest had bits and pieces of robotic machinery replacing organs. Three still had black hair and were unscarred. One had both arms torn off, the base for metal arms implanted, but hanging empty. One had eyes that glowed and teeth as sharp as fangs, unsettlingly Galra.

 

Most of them seemed almost… docile. Slower to anger than Shiro had been. Some were numb to pain. Each item on the list left him feeling like retching. 

 

And Keith watched after each and every one. He talked to them, low little whispered conversations that ended in casual touch.

 

Part of him wanted to swell with pride at the way Keith perfectly handled each interaction. The rest of him seethed in crass jealousy.

 

It was true that he’d been relatively safe with Matt and the other fighters, but between all the clones and leading Voltron, it was clear that Keith had little time to spare.

 

Apart, he’d entertained small fantasies of seeing the team again. Of, if he were to be honest, seeing Keith again.

 

But they hadn’t had time to so much as talk since he was always hovering over this or that clone, like a doting wife. Worse, the clones responded to him, their transparent trust in Keith like a naked mirror of his own.

 

But it was small, to think this way. Base and crude to begrudge kindness to a consciousness who had never had it. 

 

Shiro took a breath, centering himself, and pasted on his brightest smile. “Hey, need any help?”

 

The smile Keith sent his way was instantly blinding.

 

* * *

* * *

 

They thought he was crazy.

 

Keith was used to that. He had more important things to do.

 

Like figuring out a place for all the Shiros to sleep. In the end they turned one of the unused dining halls into an oversized blanket fort- Lance and Allura had been really into it, so he’d left them to their decoration project.

 

Pidge was busy tending Matt and he didn’t begrudge her the hours by Matt’s side. She’d started stress-building trackers they could use to identify the clones, anyway.

 

Shiro was dependable, ever the rock. Welcoming his clone brethren put strain on his smile, but his words comforted and his clasps smoothed edges from the anxious ones.

 

He wished he could tell them it was more than that they looked like Shiro.

 

It was that they’d been abandoned.

 

Forgotten, in tanks of quintessence-infused liquid, cut up and discarded.

 

Here was the sum of transgressions against Shiro’s person, against his body and mind, compounded into souls and multiplied.

 

He couldn’t leave them. He didn’t want to. And he hadn’t.

 

It was simple as that.

 

They weren’t his Shiro. Even the most perfect clone didn’t move like Shiro did, didn’t laugh like him, didn’t touch him like he did. None of them were Shiro, with the hairline cracks of imperfections Keith loved as fiercely as he did his smile. But he couldn’t not love them when he saw the pieces of Shiro in them.

 

If he had to keep a thousand Shiros together with nothing but his own two hands, he would.

 

It exhausted him. He cared too much. He’d always known that.

 

But Shiro had taught him it was never wrong to care.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Allura’s memories of the Galra were a haze, truth be told. She had vague memories of kind purple faces giving her sweets, blurry after-images from literal lifetimes ago. The hate was more immediate, as fresh as though she’d seen the warships but yesterday. The hate had been sealed with her, festering in its own filth in her heart.

 

She was learning, slowly, that memories and feelings had no place in justice. That the inheritance she had been left with was to pursue peace and not to enforce it. That in pursuing an ideal, she shouldn’t let others fall by the wayside.

 

And then something like this- was simply atrocious. Not even their finest alchemists had entertained the idea of artificial life. At least, not for long.

 

There were no good reasons for the Galra to have made these facsimiles.

 

Like ghosts, they wandered. Even a child could see they suffered, tortured by Galra.

 

And yet, it was Keith who guided them. Keith who offered them his heart. Keith who found in him the strength to give where there had been none.

 

Allura looked down at her hands; at the fluffy pillow the synthesizers had trundled out. Walking in her father's shadow was easier, when nobody but Coran remembered how good of a man he had been. And yet, every failure weighed on her, a whisper like the hiss of her tutor when she was young.

 

It was hard to realize you're not as good as a person as you thought you were; as you wanted to be. And sometimes it was easier to blame someone else for it.

 

“Princess?” Lance called. He was covered in puffs of down from an early mishap, holding out a lion-printed blanket. “What do you think?”

 

“I think we need more of these, don’t you?” Allura said with forced cheer.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Alright, Lance had freaked out, but only a little bit!

 

It wasn’t everyday that you had double handfuls of Shiros running around the ship. And Hunk was right, some of them _were_ kinda creepy. And a couple _really_ needed a good shave. Not to mention a haircut. Not that the mice had done all that bad a job with the braids, really.

 

Plus, they were kinda weird. All of the clones kind of… followed Keith around a lot. They hovered near him like a herd of sheep, reaching out to touch Keith and get his attention from time to time.

 

It was weird, seeing people _touch_ Keith. _Voluntarily_ , even! Weirder still, Keith didn't flinch or do his stupid stone-face thing. In fact, he kind of… well, he kind of looked like mama when mom came home. He never turned them away.

 

In a way he was kind of surprised Keith hadn’t chosen to just pile them into _his_ room. Then again, all the Shiros around him kind of made him look especially shorter than usual. He’d probably get buried alive if they nested in his room.

 

He wasn’t really sure what the whole deal with all the Shiros was, but it wasn’t like having more Shiros is inherently a bad thing, he figured. It sure made the Castle feel a lot more lived in, at least. Definitely better than more Keiths around, that was for sure, though it _might_ have been nice to have more princesses.

 

He snuck a glance at Allura, feeling that happy little light-up feeling in remembering he’d managed to score decor duty with her. What better way to show that Lance totally had the best eye and an appreciation for home-making? She looked cute with her hair caught up in a braid instead of her usual updo. It was almost like a date.

 

Lance hauled a plump mattress into place under the table. With the colorful lion blankets around and plenty of soft pillows, it made a plush blanket fort for the Shiros to relax in. Kind of like cardboard boxes for cats. The fort was totally his idea, too. The banquet hall was a little too big and cold to set up futons on the floor. Plus, he wasn’t an expert or anything but his ever-sharp eyes had noticed the way the clones all kind of flinched at bright lights.

 

A job well done, if he said so himself.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Pidge kind of thought everyone was overreacting, a bit.

 

So they had Shiros now, multiple- hadn’t they already established the idea back when they proved alternate realities were a thing?

 

Of _course_ Keith would’ve brought them back.  Pidge just kind of hoped they hadn’t thought to make any of her family, though. Looking for _two_ humans was hard enough with a whole universe to go through and she'd just found Matt. She didn’t want to think about how she’d go looking for clones.

 

But it made sense. The Galra had gotten a sample and they’d experimented. She knew it was cold, but science was objective. You needed data. Numbers didn’t lie. And truth be told, they probably could have done a lot worse than Shiro. She shuddered to think what they’d be doing now if they had a room full of Lances to deal with.

 

She clicked her fingers against her laptop, waiting for her program to upload itself into the tracker she was building. It would check vitals, too, and send a distress signal when there was a sudden adrenaline spike- just in case.

 

They were results. She wasn’t really interested in if they were human or not or if they were Shiro or not. She suspected Keith didn’t either.

 

After all, those answers didn’t change anything about what they had to do for them.

 

* * *

* * *

 

It was funny, the things you got used to. It wasn’t all that long ago when he used to be a bit of spitfire. Now, he tended to think about what his grandfather would do. What King Alfor would have. That, more than the slipperies, made him feel a bit old, to be perfectly honest. But only a bit!

 

Clones, now, that wasn’t _new_ per se, but it had certainly been a long time since the topic had been brought up. Shiro was a good lad- a little wound tight, but seeing him at the Command Deck reminded Coran sometimes of the Paladins of Old. The way they had looked, from the back, strong and proud, had always filled him with awe. Shiro was far too young for the weight of his mantle, but he bore it well- better than the others, even, save Allura, who had been brought up as heir to the throne.

 

Even now, he could see him and Keith working together to figure out how to populate medical charts for each clone based on the readings.

 

But they were children, really. Each and every one of them. Bright, strong children made into the Universe’s last defense. These other Shiros-- they were simply more. It tore at him to see them burdened with war. Why, they hardly laughed at his jokes! This wasn’t the future, the universe Alfor had hoped for when he’d entrusted it to Coran.

 

But it wasn’t quite the worst one that could have happened. And really, next to that, what were a few more kids? The Castle had more than room enough. Better to fill it with people than the ghosts of their past.

 

“You boys need a hand? Maybe an arm?” Coran asked cheerily, clapping them both on the back.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: "How can there be too many children? That's like saying there are too many flowers." -Mother Theresa.
> 
> Just a little something milling around my drafts after S3 and I figured I should post it before S4 dropped! :'D


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